Traversing Tricky Trails
by coldqueen
Summary: Prequel to Unexpected Convergence. Mugen undertakes his own journey, and comes to some startling realizations when he gets there. Oneshot, postseries.


**Traversing Tricky Trails**

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Rating: T

Summary: This is a prequel to my recently completed story, "Unexpected Convergence". This is Mugen-centric, and it explains a bit about the character he is in that story. I'm happy to say you do not have to read_ **UC**_ to understand this story (though you should cause it's an awesome story). Suffice it to say, this is post-series.

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There are some who believe that eyes are windows into a person's soul, but he didn't want to imagine what that said about him. True, he couldn't see his own eyes unless with a mirror, and mirror were known to distort things, but he did see through those eyes, and he did know that sometimes he saw things in ways other people didn't. He had cold eyes, in the face of the passion of his movements, eyes that calculated and saw everything.

Even now, locked in a cold, empty cell, one door, small window, he saw everything in the waning light of day. He saw the small bowl of food he'd been allowed, empty now, licked clean. He saw the pile of grass, freshly shorn from the ground and laid in for him to sleep in. He saw the small line of blades of grass, across the room, showing the passing of each day. If he could count, he'd know that he'd been in that room almost 60 days, roughly three months. What he didn't see were people, any people, any soul. Isolation, pure and simple, had a way of driving a man mad.

Mad enough, indeed, to finally see things as they were, and not as he wished them to be.

They put something in the food to make him sleep; he could hear them whisper through the intoxication that no one risked facing him while he was awake and about, his fighting skills were infamous around these parts. No one would risk death just to ensure the captive had food and water. It was the only humane thing they did for Mugen. Otherwise, he was alone.

They'd given him space, when he'd arrived at the docks, older, taller, if possible, skinnier, yet still recognizable. In whispers, he caught the occasional word, ignoring it in favor of seeking his own nirvana. Pirate, coward, and murderer; son, brother, and maybe somewhere, a father. Ancestors knew, he'd never been particularly careful in that regard.

Someday maybe, his son, if there was one, would seek Mugen out. Like Fuu before him, he'd try to make sense of the abandonment that was his womb. Unlike Fuu, Mugen hoped that his child would find satisfaction at the end of his journey, and not feel heartbreak as she had.

She's where it started, Mugen recalled and recognized. Her and her fool's trip. Find the Sunflower Samurai, and find eternal bliss, so her voice had described, if not out and out said. Like a lamb to the slaughter, he'd followed and guided her there. Just to be close to the fire that burned in her. Just to watch its light flicker on the walls of time, maybe even, to get singed and enjoy every charred moment of it.

Fire or no, she'd scarred him as no other woman had ever scarred him. Waving goodbye, he'd walked away, and still she haunted him. Taunted him. By day, he was the swaggering braggart he'd always been, but by night, when he couldn't sleep for mourning, he thought of her.

She'd spun him around her finger and left him wanting, in the end, leaving him yearning. He'd like to hate her for it, but it'd brought him here, to this place. It'd brought him to a struggle to understand what these feelings were inside. Still very much a child, he had no name for what Fuu was to him. He had thoughts, ideas, notions; nothing concrete.

Home is where the heart is.

Okinawa, a small island, spit-distance from the main land of this country. He'd left with his tail between his legs and his eyes down, trying to forget all the destruction behind him. He'd left his mother, a broken woman, and perhaps he liked to think that his leaving her a bit more. It'd be more than she'd ever admit.

Upon meeting the flint-eyed warrior, many would say his strength was that of the gods, a man able to fight through any pain, with the speed and agility of the wind. It was only the two who'd stayed around long enough to see through that arrogance, Fuu and Jin; it was only they who'd realized the truth. The carelessness of his fighting, the slow smiles, and evil words, were just an act, portrayed by a clever boy with a wounded heart.

They'd all been damaged, in some way. Perhaps it was the cracks of their realities that'd drawn them together. Maybe it was as it had seemed, and he and his compatriot had been drawn to her, love at first sight in some way changing into an almost obsessive need to be near.

She'd been the best of them, and when at her worst, they'd risen to be the best of her.

The house looked the same as it had when he'd left. His mother, a whore who'd worked her way into a "steady" relationship with a rather wealthy man, had just gained a new level of society when Mugen had ran. She'd been happy to see him go, fugitive that he'd been.

Standing on the front stoop, hearing her speak softly inside, Mugen found himself almost child-like in thought. It'd been many years since they'd last spoken, and their words had not been loving. In point of fact, he'd not spoken to his mother a lot longer than he'd not seen her. Months before his indictment as pirate, his mother had forced him to leave the brothel, claiming he was much too old to remain there suckling for her money tit. Crude, but accurate.

He didn't have to raise his hand to knock, a shadow inside staring at him from within pushing the door open bare inches.

He had her eyes.

He also had her temperament.

Out of nowhere, fast as only bullets can be, his progenitor shot him in the shoulder and sent him flying away. The last thing he remembered before the darkness enclosed was seeing his own likeness, femininely-twisted, staring down at him in utter apathy.

When he woke, he'd been here in the hellish hole, watching as the light from a window high above his head spread across the wall opposite him. It was cold, and he shivered in the shadows, taking in his surroundings.

Outside the door, there was a small scrape, Mugen stiffened and prepared for battle or beating, yet none came. His shoulder ached and his head throbbed, other than that, he was fine.

There was a bowl of oats, some water, and a chamber pot. He saw neither hide nor hair of anyone for three months.

Which brings us to today, an important day; today Mugen would have a visitor. He sat on that wall, watching as a draft from the door blew his carefully laid day counting grass across the floor, amusing himself by watching it dance. He'd long given up hope of escaping, so well made was the cell; and he'd long given the despair of a slow death. Whoever kept him captive, and given the lack of beatings it wasn't the government, but whoever kept him, kept him fed and water, if not especially clean.

He'd had a lot of time to think, in this hellhole, to remember what led him to this place. Despite all her anger, and it was massive, Fuu had loved her father. Mugen had seen it in her eyes. He supposed he'd come here, seeking to find a love like that, one that transcends all problems. Instead, he'd found a bullet.

He had to smile though. Nothing was ever easy for Mugen. Take the hard road, do it the hard way, say the hard things. He was not an easy man. Mugen lived the way life lived him. He walked the way he talked, and he talked the way he walked, and neither was especially delicate.

Idly twisting a blade of grass around his finger, Mugen almost missed the sound of a step outside his door. Even missing that, he couldn't miss the voice that accompanied.

"You cry in the night."

"I'm sorry, am I disturbing you?" Mugen replied, his voice hoarse from weeks of misuse.

"No, it's not that...you never cried when you were younger."

Mugen didn't recognize the voice, so he didn't know how she knew what he'd been like as a young'un, but he couldn't really be choosy with whom his conversational counterparts were. "I was tough. I didn't cry."

The voice hesitated before speaking again. "You had to be the man of the house, so young."

"I didn't have a choice."

"I gave you no choice."

Mugen froze in mid-swing of grass, and slowly brought it to his mouth to chew. He knew who the speaker was now, and just acknowledging her made memories crowd his mind. The smell of her, the feel of her skin, and even the sound of her voice. She sounded older now, wearier in a way, her voice rough in its timber. Maybe it was because she was speaking through a door.

Though anger came quicker, Mugen went with caution. This was why he'd come here, to seek truth and realization about who he was. Long years spent wandering, perhaps seeking a new home, had brought him to the idea that he'd never truly had a home in the first place. Only she could answer that.

"True."

Silence. It was absolutely dark in his chamber now, the temperature dropping quickly. Crossing his arms and leaning back into the dirt wall, Mugen waited. After sparring with Jin, he'd realized that he who moved first lost the advantage. That, and three months alone, had taught him patience, and a good many other things.

"Do you want to apologize?"

"For using me to shield yourself, or for shooting me?"

"Either."

"No. I don't want you to apologize."

"I locked you up here to keep-"

"I don't care."

"I want to explain, Mugen."

"You don't have to."

"Why not?"

Mugen smiled, though neither she nor anyone else could. He thought of Fuu as he replied. "I have faith."

"In me?"

He thought on it, and realized with a startling second, that he did. "Yes." When did that happen, he wondered. Had it been between listening to Fuu tell them of the hardships her own abandoned mother had endured, or had it been watching Fuu believe in her parents through it all. She'd hated her father, the Sunflower Samurai, but she'd believed in him, even in the end.

"Why?"

"You're my mother."

She had no response for that, a simple fact stated in a cold voice. Mugen could hear her shift out in the space beyond the door, and strained to hear if she was retreating. She hadn't.

"You're different."

"I've grown up, Mother."

"I can see." She hesitated, and spoke on. "When I saw you, at the door, for a second I thought I was seeing your father."

"So you shot me?"

She laughed lightly, bitterly. "No. I was shocked. I shouldn't have been, you've always resembled him."

"Is that why you couldn't bear to look at me as a child?" Mugen stood, stepping close to the door, almost imagining that he could see her silhouette through the door.

"Yes." Tears trembled in her voice, like dew on a spiderweb, clinging but barely so. "You were like him, but in so many ways, like me. It was watching him be tainted."

"I'm tainted?"

"No," she said on a rush, "I was. You're my son, and you are truly a product of your parents. May the gods forgive me."

"Mother..."

"Why did you return here? The people in town wanted to kill you."

Mugen really had no answer that he was willing to give her. "I don't know who I am."

"You're Mugen-"

"No. I don't mean my name. I mean _me_. I've walked this land for many a year, believing so many things. Then recently, I met some people, and I realized that who I am I don't want to be, and I never really was."

"You're confusing me."

"I'm confusing myself," Mugen confessed. He braced his hands on the door, and swore to himself that he could feel her do the same on the other side.

"It's okay to be confused. You're just a boy, Mugen."

He shook his head. "No. Not anymore."

"Yes, you are. I can hear it."

He said nothing, and in the silence that followed the small lock on the door clicked, and it slowly swung open on it's hinge. In the shadows of the stairway stood his mother, a small woman of large proportions, with big eyes that sparkle with tears.

"You're my son, and I did you wrong. I can hear you cry in the night, and they're a boy's tears. They're my fault."

He couldn't speak, not when he was so close to letting it all go.

His mother stepped forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders and staring into his eyes, her eyes. "It's all my fault. I pushed you away, allowed you to be caught by the evil side of life. I could have protected you and I didn't. It's okay to blame me."

He did, but he hadn't for so long. He'd left this place thinking himself a coward and all that was evil, because he hadn't been able to keep himself out of trouble. He hadn't been able to protect himself, and he'd spent the next five years on the mainland trying to. He'd never let himself place any of the blame of his life on anyone else, because that would be admitting that he'd needed someone else.

She continued. "I look at you now, and I don't see the boy I couldn't love. I see a man who doesn't need my approval and love. You're strong, and you're honest, and I can see now that you're more of your father than I ever thought you could be."

She hugged him, and other than quick gropes in the back of a brothel, it was more touch than he'd had in many years. Suddenly, he grasped a concept within himself that he'd not been able to classify. It was an emotion, an ideal, an integral of his physical and mental selves.

That shifting, roiling creature within him that had been born the day he'd met his friends, and grown with each passing day; that feeling he couldn't identify; that shadow that slowly was moving through him; it was a change of what he was. In the wake of his epiphany, he could sense it.

He was becoming a man and not a pirating killer either. For some reason, in ways he didn't want to examine, he wanted to be the man his mother thought she saw. He wanted to be seen and not feared. He wanted to help and not hurt.

He wanted to be brave and never to run again.

His mother pushed away and started to pull him from that room. "The villagers have stopped looking for you, so you should be able to leave now. I kept you down here so they wouldn't see you and kill you."

"I don't want to leave," Mugen replied, trying to pull away from her ironclad grip.

At the top of the small set of stairs, he could see they were in the middle of a large field, of sunflowers, most ironic. There was no noise, not even birds, and only a brief wind that stirred his soiled clothing.

"You cannot stay," she replied, stilling holding his hand, and now dragging him to a small cliff not far. She pointed to some small lights in the distance. "That's a shipping house, a bit off from the town. They know you're coming and have provided a boat to get you away."

"I don't want to go. I'm home."

Shaking her head, his mother turned back to him. "This can't be your home, Mugen. It's too late for that." She pushed him ahead of her, and onto a darkened path leading away.

With no other recourse, her logic impeccable, he started to walk. Just before he entered a small wood, he laid his hand on the bark of a tree and turned back to her.

He was leaving, and wouldn't return, but he knew some things, had faith in them more than he'd ever had faith in anything.

He was a coward, but he was changing, and becoming more.

He had no home, but he would find one and make it his own.

He loved a girl, but she hadn't loved him back.

He smelled horrible, and he needed a bath.


End file.
